Summary for September 2024

A whole wide witchy world

A very small figure of April Ryan, a short-haired brunette, stands on a country road. There are some small wooded buildings, probably a house and a barn, off to her left, with huge sunflower-like flowers behind a small fence. To her right, there is a small herd of animals that looks like an elephant-bull hybrid. Further out, lush green mountains, stretching far into a bluish haze under fluffy white clouds. There are also two huge statues of humanoids blowing into horns.

I don’t need a “it’s a game from a quarter of a century ago” qualifier to say that The Longest Journey is a great game. Because there is not much to qualify. Sure, it’s not perfect, nothing is. But the story is good, the puzzles are logical, it’s still pretty and very charming. Quite progressive in places, too.

Like many fairy tales, Tchia is a bit dark. It’s also a bit junky in that indie way. But overall, a very good game! A sort of Breath of the Wild and The Wind Waker hybrid. Plenty to do, collect, discover and customise.

Girl with short red hair, wearing a white jacket, dark pants and boots, glides on a zip line towards a concrete tower. Below her is a sandy desert, to her right is a large concrete building, and to her left are some white tube-shaped missile debris. On the horizon is an ominous red storm with white clouds swirling around it.

A significant element of both Caravan SandWitch and Mika and the Witch’s Mountain stories is how capitalism is ruining it for all of us. In both games you traverse a decently sized open world. You help the community, collect things and find secrets. There are non-humanoid people around, and they both have witches. The same game?

I’m kidding, but there are surprisingly many similarities, apart from the obvious: in Caravan you drive a van, but in Mika you fly on a broom. By the way, this is more platforming with gliding, less actual flying. I know, I was worried too: the ghost of Superman 64 is always looming.

They did it. They did it again. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is fantastic!

Princess Zelda, a blonde lady with pointed ears, wearing a white dress with blue trim, stands on the edge of a sunlit world. There are mountains in the distance. In front of her is a river with clear water, then a forest with some roads in it. In the middle of it all is a town, surrounded by a moat, with a castle in it. Everything is somewhat blocky and cartoony.

OK, the elephant in the room: developers, and Nintendo is no exception, have a tendency to say shit and then either the game doesn’t even have that as a problem, or it goes beyond that and is actually good, progressive, if you like. This is more or less the case here. Well, I wouldn’t call Echoes of Wisdom woke or anything, but as far as I can tell, it never makes a misstep and delivers a complete The Legend of Zelda game with Zelda as the protagonist.

And it is complete, to the point where I can’t even think of what was in BotW/TotK that isn’t here. From dungeons to shrines, from quests to secrets, from horse riding to imaginative and fun world manipulation (“hey, can I do that?… oh wow, I totally can!”).

Obviously, it has its own thing going on with the echoes mechanic, and there’s been some tweaking to make it work in flat-ish style of the Link’s Awakening remake, but it’s all there! And the game is long, too. There are also a few firsts that I won’t spoil. And cats. So many cats!

I think I mentioned somewhere that the Zelda games from Nintendo are my “problematic faves”, and I stand by that: problems ranging from questionable game elements to the firing of a harassed employee. But I think if they keep going in this direction with games (even with ridiculous claims that there needs to be a justification for these changes) and fix other shit, I won’t have to say it so often.